


Lost the battle, Win the war

by herpexia



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Author doesn't know how to plot, Character Study, F/M, Female Tony Stark, M/M, aka Natasha Stark, please see additional author note!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 01:31:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1410034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herpexia/pseuds/herpexia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not good enough to build weapons unless you know how to make yourself into one.</p><p>“You never give up, do you?” Steve asks, almost like to himself. She doesn’t know what to say so she just shrugs again and pulls her knees to her chest and studies Steve with her head rested on her knees. Why would she?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost the battle, Win the war

**Author's Note:**

> A Tony Stark character study is something I have wanted to do for ages, but then I got obsessed with the idea of Tony Stark as a girl and this happened.
> 
> Apart from the gender change it's canon with the first two Iron Man movies and The Avengers, apart from slight changes concerning Pepper.
> 
> (The title is a Paramore quote because I hate titles and titles hate me)
> 
> New author's note (11/12/15): since I notice this story still getting kudos today (which I very much appreciate!!), I wanted to add something here. I realise that taking a m/m ship and making it into a f/m ship by making a male character into a cis girl is kinda dumb. Being cis myself I feel I am not in a place to write a trans character, but what I did might have not been the best solution, I now feel. (let's face it trans girl tony would be better okay)  
> However I wanna point out that I did not choose to make Tony a girl because of the relationship with Steve (aka to make it a "straight relationship"). I 100% did it because I wanted to explore Tony's life from this point of view. Tbh this isn't really even very heavy on Tony/Steve, and its mostly a character study with a pretty open ending.   
> I hope people continue to like this story, but this is something I wanted to point out, now that I understand some things better myself.

The first time Natasha Stark is unwanted is a minute after her birth, after her father finds out his baby boy is actually a girl. Of course she doesn’t remember this herself, but when her father never addresses her birthday like a day of happiness, she kind of adds it all up. She was supposed to be the boy to continue Stark’s name and the Stark Industries, and no matter how hard she tries, his father never loves her the way he would have loved a boy. A son.

No matter how smart she is, how she does exactly what her father does as soon as her fine motor skills are developed enough to hold tools, she only ever gets that disappointed look from her dad. _A son would have done that better. Why do it at all if you don’t do it perfectly, Tasha?_ She builds her first robot when she’s six, but her father never even looks at it.

Her mom takes her to a ballet class once when she’s little. Her father gets angry and says it’s not something Tasha needs to be spending time doing, so he calls it off and she never goes back to the class. Ballet being pointless and stupid is one of the few things she and her father ever agree on.

Instead she sneaks up to the private gym in their house and starts beating the hell out of the punching bag as soon as she’s tall enough to reach it. Sure Howard must know, but he doesn’t say a thing. She masters basic martial arts at a young age, because it’s not enough to build weapons unless you know how to make yourself into one.

School bores the crap out of her, even though the school she’s sent to is supposed to be for gifted children. Math is never an issue, she learns to work with numbers before she even reads properly but it’s all too easy and she wants more from life. She has the thirst, the drive to learn something new but she despises being stuck on a school bench so she skips all the school she can without being kicked out. She always scores the best on tests anyway.

Her father still allows her to his workshop, because she knows what she’s doing okay, and she’s a crucial part of the Stark Industries’ weapons manufacturing by the time she turns 11.

When his father slowly starts spiraling into full on alcoholism instead of full on weapons designing, she takes on the habit of checking and improving everything her father does after Obie assures her it’s best this way. It’s not like it’s anything she doesn’t know how to do. The weapons she designs are even better and as she turns 14 she pretty much is the force behind SI weaponry. She doesn’t find it weird or wrong in any way, after all Obie says it’s for the best, and at least Obie looks at her with affection instead of disgust.

That’s why she spends her teenage years thinking she’s in love with Obie. Obie is like a constant in her life, always there, telling how Tasha will be something great when she grows up, how she’s going to save the company, bring it to the next level. Obie’s golden goose. Later Tasha of course understands how it’s nothing more than Obie’s love for power, but when she’s young and naïve and all out of love she really feels like Obie is the only one who loves and understands her.

She enters MIT at 15, the youngest, the only girl and by far the most intelligent on her class. Boys in the school can’t seem to deal with the fact that she outsmarts them in everything, saying Howard Stark’s girl has got it easy, and try to humiliate her sexually to show how she’s still just a woman who needs to know her place. But she designs weapons as a job, she designed herself to be one, so she breaks a dozen noses and hopefully cracks a few ribs, too, and after a while they just ignore her.

School is still boring and she still hates it and she still skips all she can, but at least she gets to work on the stuff she’s interested in. She’s just the small girl with dark eyes and wild curls that refuse to grow past her shoulders, sitting far back in the class, but when she bothers to do something, she’s amazing at it.

They tell her once that she needs to show some passion about what she does, no matter how good she is at it and she’s reminded once again of her father’s disapproval. She shrugs, lights up her cigarette and doesn’t tell them how she’s _this close_ on solving the puzzle and building an actual AI to keep her company, because she’s fuckin lonely okay. Howard Stark’s son would have probably figured it all out faster anyway.

She soon finds bars near the college that don’t really ask for your ID, especially if you are a pretty girl and know how to hold your liquor, at least in public places.  There, too, no one touches her unless she fuckin says so, but every time she goes she leaves with a different guy or a different girl. Bodies after bodies in her bed, bite marks running down her skin, but not a single name or a single loving touch.

She kisses Obie once when she’s 16 and drunk out of her mind, but the man just gently pushes her away and tucks her to her bed and at that moment Tasha isn’t sure whether it’s Obie or herself she hates the most.

The world feels too small around her, like walls coming closer and closer the older she gets and she does everything she can to feel better even for a tiny bit. Everything around her is choking her to death so she drinks and smokes and has sex with boys and girls and sometimes both the same time, drives expensive cars way too fast and builds robots so she wouldn’t feel like she’s dying. It eases it for a while, almost like scratching an itch that’s been bothering you for ages, but she needs more and more to keep herself afloat.

A club nearby looks for strippers and she has to try it because there isn’t a thing she doesn’t want to try, so she lies about her age and tells them no one gets to lay hands on her, and goes for it. She feels like a little girl, her body is skinny in all the wrong places and her eyes are angry no matter how hard she tries to make them sexy, but it feels good to have every pair of eyes in the room looking at her, not having a clue who she is, but wanting her nevertheless.

Of course Howard finds out, she’s pretty sure she has a tracker under her skin but she can’t find it no matter how hard she scans herself, and when he does he beats the crap out of her, so drunk he probably doesn’t even realize it. Obie brings ice for her black eye later, and pats her on the back gently, clearly in a loss for words. She locks herself in her room, mixes painkillers with good booze and dozes off on the floor. The bruises on her sides hurt like a motherfucker when she throws up the next morning.

A week after that Obie calls her to tell about the accident. _“They didn’t make it, Tash. I’m so sorry.”_

Officially she can’t take over the company at 17, but that’s only on the paper. Obie tells her she needs to be the greatest now and works everything out, making her the one person behind the entire weapons manufacturing, working harder than ever to numb the pain, or maybe the fact that she doesn’t know if she feels pain at all. Her designs are even better, more efficient, deadlier than ever, and she works more than sleeps and drinks more than eats but it’s okay. It’s what she’s best at.

It’s Pepper who saves her from it when she’s just over 20. Sweet, efficient Pepper who holds her hair when she throws up and dries her tears afterwards and never complains about it in the morning. Tasha flirts with her the best she can, but Pepper just smiles and strokes her hair as she falls asleep on the couch after working for another week without decent sleep.

Pepper takes none of her bullshit and that’s why Tasha lover her so much. She still can’t make Tasha do all the paper work she is supposed to but she does more than she ever has before and almost always she comes to the board meetings sober and wearing decent clothing. It doesn’t actually feel too bad.

She’s still the same, sleeps with whoever she wants to whenever she wants to and drinks and works too much, but everything is wonderful because now she also holds the entire world in her hands.

They start calling her the Merchant of Death, and even though Pepper completely disapproves, she absolutely loves it. And the press loves her and she knows how to love them back, but she also knows how to keep her distance. No one touches fuckin Tasha Stark unless she says so. She’s still a weapon and you don’t want to be her enemy.

Obie once tells her she could be the queen of the world, but she just throws her hair back and laughs. Look at me, I am everything.

Then Afghanistan happens and her life just stops for a while. Three months later her heart is beating again, but with the new beat comes the new light that glows blue on her chest and she absolutely hates it. But when she flies out of it all she knows she’s finally the weapon she’s wanted to build herself into for her entire life.

When Obie pulls the light out of her chest he pulls her actual beating heart along.

If the press loved the Merchant of Death, they are absolutely obsessed with Iron Woman. She loves smiling to the cameras, because she knows that with the suit she’s even further away from anyone’s touch. No one can ever hurt her again.

If only the suit could guard her from the nightmares of hot sand and cold water in her lungs that won’t leave her alone.

With Natalie, _Natasha_ , it’s not love at first sight, but somewhere deep there is mutual respect, so they grow to be almost friends after Tasha stops trying to sleep with her and gets over her lying. It’s nice to have someone who is in some way as broken as she is, even though they don’t really talk about the things that keep them awake at night that often.

Pepper is madder than she has ever been before at Tasha for not telling her she was dying. Or maybe she’s just mad about Tasha almost dying, whether she knew about it or not. Either way, she finally kisses Pepper after that to shut her up, and for a second it’s better than anything has ever been. Then Pepper pulls away and the look in her eyes is sad. Almost like pity.

“You know it’s not going to work, Tasha” Pepper says and stokes Tasha’s face gently.

“You were always too good for me anyway”, Tasha jokes and tries to swallow the tears that come burning behind her eyes.

Pepper just pulls her into a tight hug, stokes her dark curls and lets Tasha cry against her expensive shirt for a while. When she’s done crying, Pepper just holds her and whispers into her ear:

“I know someone is going to save you, Tasha.”

The idea of Avengers is ridiculous, she thinks when she first hears about it. Then she hears she hasn’t been invited and she feels like she’s been left alone on the playground. It frustrates her and she just wants to buy the entire playground.

Of course she knows how much time, money and energy Howard Stark spent on trying to find Captain America. All she ever heard when she was a child (apart from the obvious _you are not good enough Natasha_ ) was how amazing Cap was and how well he did everything and how _he_ was one of the greatest achievements in Howards live. She saw how miserable her father got day after day when his searches always came out empty. And because Tasha’s brain was stupid when she was young, she hated Captain fuckin America with all her heart but at the same time developed a major crush on the hero she sometimes secretly dreamed could save even her.

So when they call her to tell they have finally pulled Cap out of the ice she has no idea what to do with the information. She wants so badly to meet the one person his father ever thought was worthy, but at the same time she doesn’t even wanna hear the name Steve Rogers.

“You look exactly like Howard” are Steve’s first words to her. She decides she hates Captain America.

She enters Germany in style because she likes being invited to play, even if it means playing with Steve. When they meet again it all goes south before it even begins properly, and it’s a full on screaming match between them sooner than anyone could have predicted it.

“A little girl in a suit of armor. Take that off and what are you?” Steve asks him and that hurts okay. She doesn’t need anyone to remind her how she’s just a girl and how she can never truly be anything because she has tits and a pretty face. But Tasha Stark is a weapon, so she just puts on her game face and strikes back with no regrets.

“You are a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle.”

She sees how Steve’s face just falls at that and she does her best to convince herself she is happy about it.

She flies a nuke to space, sees a world she never wants to see again and apparently saves the one she lives in. When she freefalls out of the sky she thinks about falling in another place, landing against the hot desert sand what feels like a lifetime ago and closes her eyes.

When she opens her eyes and appears to be not dead after all, the first thing they focus on is Steve Rogers and for a reason she can’t figure out she feels relieved to see him.

Somewhere along the way after New York she lets everyone move to the Stark Tower which kind of transforms itself into the Avengers Tower. She sees the SHIELD barracks where Steve, Nat and Clint are supposed to be living, and Bruce doesn’t exactly have a home, so she doesn’t even have to think about it that much. She gives everyone their own floor; even builds one for Thor, if he ever comes back from Asgard. It’s not like she can’t just hide in her own floor forever if her plan goes south.

After a while they just kind of become a team, and when they battle against the villain of the week she can’t help but admire the way they fight in unison. Maybe the idea of the Avengers wasn’t too bad, after all. Not that she’ll ever admit that to Nick Fury.

The life in the Tower is sometimes like living in a twisted frat house but she kind of likes it anyway. After a while she realizes that she doesn’t even mope alone in her floor that much.

If the nightmares after Afghanistan were bad, the ones she has now are way worse. When she manages to sleep more than a few minutes at a time, she dreams of falling and wakes up sweaty with the sheets pooling around her. At some point she just starts to avoid sleeping all together.

And no matter what time it is when she wonders to the kitchen for coffee so she doesn’t have to sleep again, she always finds Clint Barton sitting there, doing the same thing. Even though Tasha sees how much Clint is still suffering after everything that happened with Loki and she doesn’t really know what to say, those sleepless night are when they learn to get along. It might have to do with the bottle she sets on the table. Or maybe it’s the way neither one of them ever takes anything too seriously. Maybe it’s not a friendship but it comforts her in the nights when she wakes up to her own screams.

With Bruce everything is easy. He never tries to sleep with her and she never tries to sleep with him, and they talk about science until Bruce falls asleep and Tasha pulls a blanket on top of him and kisses his temple.

“I don’t know if it’s scary or brilliant how crazy you are Tash”, Bruce says once. Tasha just laughs.

They watch movies together when they are not trying to crack the secrets of the world, and from the way Bruce looks at her she knows that if anyone ever tries to hurt her, the other guy won’t be too happy about it.

She fixes and improves all Natasha’s weapons and Natasha spars with her to keep her in shape, teaching her new techniques because they all insists she needs to be able to defend herself also outside the suit. _Take that off and what are you_ keeps ringing in her ears as she presses Nat against the mat briefly before the woman turns them around and presses Tasha on the floor face down with one of her arms bend behind her back.

“Focus” Nat tells her and Tasha wants to point out the fact that she is not a fuckin assassin like the one she’s sparring with but she just laughs and takes Nat’s hand and she pulls her up. The assassin flashes her a smile and isn’t that just the pretties thing?

Okay so maybe she has a small crush on Natasha sometimes. It’s only like one third of a crush, one third of respect and one third of pure fear so who has to know anyway?

Things get easier with Steve a little at a time, and for weeks they just rudely ignore each other – hey look, they are both stubborn assholes – but it’s still better than full on fighting. Hell, maybe Tasha regrets the things she said, Steve definitely looks like he regrets the things he said, but neither one of them seem to be willing to take the first step.

“You need to apologize to Steve” Pepper tells her when she calls her one afternoon.

“Well, hello to you too, Pep, and also, why do I have to apologize to anyone? Why doesn’t Steve apologize?” She doesn’t even question how Pepper knows about their fight or whatever. She just knows things.

“Because”, she says, sounding as bored but firm as always when she’s dealing with Tasha. “The man looks miserable, he’s moping around and I know he hurt you too, but one of you is going to have to give in eventually. Besides, you kind of started acting like an asshole around him the second you met him.”

She hates it how Pepper is always right.

“He said I looked like Howard”, she says. “The first time we meet, the first thing the guy goes all _you look like him_ , like I haven’t heard the same thing a million times” she cries and the line goes silent for a while. “I am not my father, Pep, I am not”, she whispers.

“I know, Tasha. But I’m not the one you need to be telling this to.” Right again. Tasha just sighs and doesn’t say anything.

“I love you Tash”, Pepper says and she knows it her cue to hang up.

“I love you too, Pep. I really do, okay?”

Yet it’s Steve who breaks their silence first, mostly because Steve is a gentleman but also because Tasha is way too proud for her own good.

She has locked herself in the workshop like always, working on new arrows for Clint and drinking because she is a good at multi-tasking that way, when JARVIS announces that the good Captain is behind the door. To hell with it, she thinks and lets him in.

“Look at that. It’s the Star spangled man with plan!” she announces and Steve’s face just drops at that.

“Can I come in, Tasha?” he asks almost shyly. She just waves her hand without even looking at him

“Knock yourself out.”

Steve looks kind of lost in her workshop, looking around with a look on his face that is like awe mixed with confusion.

“Sooooooo”, she drawls and spins around in her chair while the whole world kind of tilts. Whoa. Okay maybe she’s slightly more drunk than she originally planned. “What brings you here?”

“I came to say I’m sorry. I should not have said the things I said, and now that I’ve seen what Iron Woman does, what _you_ can do, I… I was wrong.”

When she doesn’t say anything he continues talking.

“I read your file, Tasha. I had no idea how” he gestures toward her chest in a loss of words. “How it happened.”

 Wow. Captain America’s pity is something she so does not need right now. But she just shrugs.

“Well I guess you know everything there is to know about me now”, she’s a cold bitch, but this is not something she wants to talk about with Steve. With anyone. “I’m my own personal flashlight, isn’t that cool?”

“Did you ever talk about it with anyone?” Steve asks and Tasha wants to throw her head back and laugh like she did when she was young and stupid.

“Oh I am not talking about it with you, is that’s where we are getting at with this. Look, I appreciate it and I guess I’m sorry too, blah blah, if that’s all you can go now”, she says and turns back at the table where Clint’s arrows lie waiting for her to make them the best they can be.

“Tasha”, Steve calls from the door and this is getting a bit too annoying.

“What?!” she snaps as she turns around again, and okay maybe she’s overreacting but Steve needs to tell her what he came to say or leave. She’s not having a therapy session with a 90 year old superhero his father was obsessed with.

“It’s because I said you look like Howard, isn’t it?” Steve asks almost too quietly for Tasha to hear. What is it with him and choosing topics she absolutely does not want to discuss? Could he just drop a bomb on her heart and get it over with?

“Look. He was a crappy father but he’s dead now and I don’t want to talk about it. That’s it.” She says and she prays to anyone who is listening that Steve would just drop it. But he can’t just let it go.

“I don’t think you are you father, Tasha”, he says and it’s almost sweet.

“Everyone thinks I’m my father. That’s how it’s been since I was born. I wasn’t the boy he was hoping for but I was still the Stark heir or whatever, and I kept the weapons coming, so to a bunch of people it didn’t really matter. Why would you be any different?” She asks and suddenly she just feels tired.

“Because I knew him. And I want to know you. And I see that you are not him, and watching you do the things you do is amazing. Tasha, you are amazing and brilliant and I have never seen anyone do the things you do”, Steve babbles and why can’t he just leave?

“Huh. The last person who said I was brilliant also tried to kill me” she says and mimics the motion of pulling something out of her chest. Steve just looks her in the eye and she’s unable to turn her head away.

“You never give up, do you?” Steve asks, almost like to himself. She doesn’t know what to say so she just shrugs again and pulls her knees to her chest and studies Steve with her head rested on her knees. Why would she?

“I was thinking, maybe we could start again”, Steve suggests, and Tasha remembers Pepper’s words. The man came and apologized when it was Tasha who was acting like an idiot first. Maybe she could give it a try.

Steve reaches out his hand when she says nothing.

“Hello. I’m Steve Rogers, and I was hoping we could be friends.”

Tasha sits frozen in her place for a second, but straightens up and takes the man’s hand.

“Tasha Stark. And I guess being friends doesn’t sound too bad.” She lets go the hand and turns towards the abandoned arrows again. “Now that we have resolved this, I really have to get these arrows done for Clint. I don’t need him creeping up in my vents.”

Steve actually laughs at that.

“See you around, Tasha.”

After the weird discussion in the workshop things between them are totally different, and if people in the house didn’t know about their fight, they’d probably think they have been best friends all along.

Turns out, Steve is actually not so bad once you get to know him. He tells Tasha about his motorbike and Tasha helps him do some repairs to it. He tells Tasha he’s confused with his new phone (a horrible SHIELD issued phone) so she just throws it away (“Hey that was new!”) and gives him a Stark Phone. It gives her great pleasure to notice that Steve is way better at using that one.

They watch movies together because Tasha just needs to update the poor man’s knowledge of movies, and after a while the entire teams joins them, so they all kind of develop a habit of watching movies, crammed up on the couch on the common room every Wednesday night.

Once they learn how to stand each other they are undefeatable on the battle field, and it makes everyone on the team a lot happier. Steve never treats her as anything less than she is, “a little girl in a suit of armor” or not. When she does something absolutely stupid like goes against Cap’s orders on the field he yells at her afterwards so she just gets drunk in the workshop, but by next morning Steve usually comes down there with a cup of coffee and she doesn’t know how to be angry with someone who has coffee.

He forms a habit of hanging out in the workshop while she works, sketching up in the corner or just looking at things. For a man who spent last 70 years sleeping he is a lot better at understanding Tasha’s work and overall technology than he should be. He even loves JARVIS and has long conversation with the AI, asking about everything that comes to his mind. JARVIS never fails to answer. Most of the time he just sits there quietly, never complaining about Tasha’s loud music and it makes her feel safe.

When the Iron Woman falls out of the sky and Tasha kind of slips into a coma for a small while, the first thing she sees after waking up is Steve, sleeping in the chair next to her hospital bed. When they release her from the hospital she just kind of crashes into bed and sleeps for a long time, but after she wakes up she finds a glass of water and a bunch of white pills from her bedside table. “ _Take them_ ” the note says. Yeah, maybe Pepper isn’t the only one who refuses to take Tasha’s bullshit.

Late Nat tells her that Steve didn’t leave her bedside once.

“You have a crush on Cap or what?” Clint asks her one night as they sit together at the kitchen table and talk about everything and nothing.

“Shut up, Clint” she says and pours him another class.

One late afternoon she falls asleep watching a movie with Steve. She’s sleep deprived and it’s something Steve has picked, but she still drifts off surprisingly easy.

She wakes up with her head on Steve’s lap, his fingers gently stroking her hair and in that moment she feels like she could be okay with being saved by Captain America after all. Maybe just a little, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> At this point I feel like I want to point out that don't think girls need a man to save them.


End file.
